The world's first green star was found + photo

Astronomers in the depths of the Milky Way have encountered a mass that defies a familiar law of the star world; A star with a color that has not been recorded before. The post World's first green star has been found + Photo appeared first on Safir Arjan.

According to Ambassador Arjan, for the first time, astronomers have succeeded in identifying and recording a green star, which shines in a yellowish-green color, unlike normal stars. This celestial object named "WDJ 1330+6435" is located in the Milky Way galaxy and at a distance of about 280 light years from Earth, in the constellation of Dragon. This star is a white dwarf; That is, the dense core left over from a star that has consumed its nuclear fuel and lost its outer layers. The findings of this research have been published in the scientific journal "RES Techniques and Instruments".

The unusual color of this white dwarf is related to the chemical composition and very high density of its atmosphere. The researchers found that the rocky remnants of planets that used to revolve around this star fell to its surface and introduced elements such as calcium, lithium and especially sodium into the outer layers of the star. In normal stars, sodium absorbs light in a narrow range of orange wavelengths; But in the investigated white dwarf, the very high density causes sodium atoms to constantly collide with helium atoms and changes the way light is absorbed. As a result, instead of absorbing a small part of orange light, sodium absorbs a wider range of yellow, orange and a part of red light, and the star gets a yellowish-green appearance; A color that is not seen in stars like the sun.

This discovery was part of a research to investigate the color of white dwarfs as seen by the human eye. Scientists studied 151 white dwarfs and found that the color of these objects is related to the chemical composition of their atmosphere. White dwarfs typically have a mass of about half the mass of the Sun, but this mass is compressed into a volume roughly the size of Earth. According to the researchers, this extraordinary density allows a relatively small amount of a chemical element to absorb a large part of the star's light and change its apparent color. The data of this study is obtained from light spectrum observations in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Project and spectral models developed by researchers.

Along with the green star, scientists also identified another white dwarf, possibly one of the reddest stars known, with a salmon-pink color. This star named "WDG 1011+2845" is located at a distance of 48 light years from Earth in the constellation Leo Minor. Unlike the green star whose color is influenced by sodium, in this case carbon is the main cause of color change; Carbon that reaches the surface from deep inside the star. Carbon-rich white dwarfs are usually pink or purple, those with planetary debris in their atmosphere tend to turn yellow, and some cooler white dwarfs, with a mixture of hydrogen and helium, appear pale blue or turquoise. The researchers say these results show that white dwarfs can display almost all the colors of the spectrum.